Dragaera

OT: bois (was: Sethra Lavode vs. Enchantress of Dzur Mountain)

Sun Aug 25 10:35:40 PDT 2002

On Sat, Aug 24, 2002 at 12:59:04PM -0700, Frank Mayhar wrote:

> human cognition doesn't make much sense.  On the other hand, though, I am
> becoming more and more convinced that the difference between the complexity
> of an insect and that of a human is a matter of amount, not kind.  It's the
> same set of processes, with some modifications and much, much increased
> complexity.
 
Sufficient quantity becomes quality.  And humans have well integrated memory,
strong timesense, and above all approximate Turing universality.  Insects
don't seem to have long-term memory, and no other lifeform is known to be able
to be computationally universal.  That's a big difference in kind of complexity.
Or relatedly, we're programmable, as are other higher animals, not hard-wired.
(We usually call this 'learning'.)

-xx- Damien X-)